» From a couple whittling away at a $40,000 in credit card debt to a long-term investor who just made a small fortune on Apple stock.

» From a college student wanting to build his credit and buy a house to a retired woman struggling under a mortgage she got after paying off her first loan.

» From homeowners dealing with foreclosure or short sale to a municipal worker hoping to retire soon.

More than three dozen callers reached one of a panel of financial experts offering their experience and knowledge for the event, sponsored by The Record and the Financial Planning Association of the San Joaquin Valley.

Lodi financial planner Christopher J. Olsen said he offered a number of strategies to a couple trying to pay down $40,000 in credit card debt. In short, the goal is to keep the monthly debt payment the same but find ways to cut 12 percent interest on the bank card.

One idea was transfer the debt to a lower-interest card, making sure there's no high transfer fee, them moving it again before the rate ratchets up. Or take out a loan on the family car, which would have a lower rate, and using that to pay off the cards. Or consider taking a loan against an employee retirement plan.

"In my experience, if they get through this, they'll never get into debt again," Olsen said. "It's so painful to pay it off."

The 21-year-old college student he advised to find a low-limit credit card or some small consumer loan, perhaps for furniture or other modest purchases, and then make sure to pay the debts off.

Olsen also advised the Apple investor, who bought stock at $5 a share 20 years ago, "when everybody thought they were going under," and recently sold it for $532 a share, turning a $2,400 stake in to a $255,000 payout.

He told the investor to forgo his normal practice of doing his own taxes, filling in the IRS forms by hand.

"I told him to get a (certified public accountant) to do his taxes," Olsen said. Capital gains taxes from the sale may be complex to compute, and the seller might be subject to the alternative minimum tax.

Taking the most calls Thursday was Jo Ellen Faria-Flemmer, a mortgage adviser with Alpine Mortgage Planning in Lodi.

San Joaquin County is among the areas hardest hit by the mortgage crisis, and there was call after call involving questions about short sales, mortgage modification and foreclosure.

While there are reports about the U.S. housing market recovering, Faria-Flemmer said, "There's still a lot of cases of foreclosure out there."

What struck her most Thursday was a call from a retired woman who'd owned her home for 50 years and owned it outright at one point but took out a mortgage to help deal with a family crisis and was now barely able to keep up on the payments.

A Stockton city employee spoke to Hank Klor, a Stockton tax and financial planner, about retiring at age 55, turning her home into a rental to help pay the mortgage on a new home. But she was brought up short when reminded that the bankrupt city had reneged on retiree health benefits.

He told her, "You need to be finding out where are you going to get it and how much is it going to cost."

The case just points out the need for people to take great care when planning to retire.

"It's really more of a situation that people don't look at all of the pieces of the puzzle when they're retiring," Klor said.

Similar forethought may have helped a newly widowed woman who spoke to Seth Shapiro, an estate planning attorney with Herum Crabtree in Stockton. The woman's husband handled all their financial matters, and she was unsure what assets and investments she has or even how to find out.

To avoid such difficulties, Shapiro would advise others to "have a place where they keep financial records and make sure everybody (involved) knows where they are."

Much the same goes with estate planning documents, such as wills and trusts. Copies should go to those named in the documents, whether as executors, trustees or beneficiaries.

"It doesn't help to have a perfect estate plan if nobody knows about it," he said.